More than 20,000 people apply for one-way ticket to Mars

In its first week, space reality-TV show draws applicants from around the world.

Last week we mentioned Mars One, the combination space mission/reality TV show project that aims to send four lucky space travelers to the Red Planet... forever. Interest in the project had been quite high, with the company's latest press release noting that it had received "10,000 messages from prospective applicants from over 100 countries." But that was before it started taking actual, formal, paid applications from would-be astronauts.

Turns out that in the week since, at least 20,000 people have paid $38 to formally apply for Mars One. Various sources around the Internet, including China Daily, are reporting that the world is full of people who wouldn't mind living out the remainder of their days in a questionable camera-stuffed habitat on Mars. Around 600 of the applicants are Chinese citizens, and it's arguable that some might not understand what they're getting into. According to China Daily, some of the prospective astronauts are a little optimistic about what they might find waiting for them once they reach their destination:

Ma Qing, a 39-year-old bookseller, said, "I think the chance to be part of the project is a cool way for me to change a dull daily life. Besides, the air on Mars must be much cleaner and easier to breathe."

Spoiler alert: Mars has an average atmospheric pressure of about 0.6 percent of Earth's, measuring 0.087 psi compared to Earth's 14.7 psi. It isn't a vacuum, but it's not far off, either. Citizens of Mars will need to bring their atmosphere with them, at least until we figure out how to terraform the entire world (a feat which is utterly beyond our current level of technology, at least in part because it requires the ability to shift large amounts of cargo from Earth to Mars).

So what makes Mars One so confident of success at a task that NASA has struggled with since the 1970s? Cofounder Bas Lansdorp's plan is to pull in tremendous public interest by playing the entire mission as a "reality TV" experience, getting folks attached to Mars One contestants candidates just like they do to American Idol hopefuls. The process has already started: the Mars One applicant site already lets people rate applicants. From there, you can pick out your favorites and vote them up.

In fact, this is how the project expects to clear the majority of its financing: the Mars One project will be filmed, from beginning to end, with the spacecraft and habitats all wired up with cameras and microphones like a grand version of the Big Brother house. No word on whether or not contestants will be able to vote each other out of the airlock, but here's hoping, because that would be awesome. And also horrible. But awesome.

About a billion people live today without access to clean water or a toilet. Half of them live outside of the boundaries of the rule of law, in areas controlled by militias or mobs. A good chunk of them have a 50% chance of dying young due to violence or preventable diseases. Most have high expectations of seeing at least one of their children die before adulthood. The majority have zero expectations that things will get much better during their lifetimes. Why would anyone be surprised that some people, even those doing MUCH better than the worst off, would want to live the rest of their lives in a reasonably safe place, with decent food and clean water, with no guns and diseases around, doing something unique and groundbreaking?

Question: So what is the different between living in prison and living on Mars?

Answer: The former is a convict, the latter is a hero. Neither gets any freedom, though.

Going to Mars takes a little more work to do. But if you couldn't wait and want the taste of what Mars is like so badly, then you might want to give prison a try. These two environments are identical to one and other. Just hand over $38 and I will guild you through how step by step. No hidden costs, guaranteeeeeee!

Not saying I have been prison. No I have not been prison, but I heard so much of it over the news on how people got there quick .. with a short cut.

I'm raising the BS flag myself. This project, even on the remote chance it got off the ground, would be the equivalent of a Reality TV snuff film. Not cool.

Agree. I have my doubts that any country would ethically allow this to proceed or even to be broadcast.

Oh, I don't know about that. I'd probably subscribe for a pay-per-view to watch the scurge of our current population die a slow and painful death. Can we automatically seed in previous reality show contestants to the selection process, much like how a tennis championships works?

at least until we figure out how to terraform the entire world (a feat which is utterly beyond our current level of technology, at least in part because it requires the ability to shift large amounts of cargo from Earth to Mars).

Not to be too nitpicky here - and this is only tangentially related to the article - but terraforming Mars wouldn't actually require that much material from Earth.

Terraforming Mars will not work because Mars does not have a magnetic field.Without a magnetic field most of any new atmosphere created will be blown away by the solar wind.

And I haven't seen any proposal showing a way to create a magnetic field on the entire planet of Mars.

That's a valid point, but people who bring up that argument always forget one thing - the sheer amount of time it takes for solar wind to blow away an atmosphere. We're talking MILLIONS of years, which is such a long time that the problem becomes essentially irrelevant.

Well, I would have signed up if it was a trip to Venus. There the gravity is almost the same as on Earth and you have plenty of sunlight and heat to use for powering everything that you need. You can also build ships that will basically float on "top" of that thick atmosphere. And the trip to Venus will take months.

I actually have a bet with my nerd friend about going to Mars vs. going to Venus. The loser gets circumcised(*) with hand made scissors.

If this were to actually happen, what will be the stance on procreation by the participants?

We don't know if it's even possible. NASA did an experiment where they flew a batch of fertilized frog eggs on the shuttle. None of them developed into healthy embryos. The conclusion of the study was that some level of gravity is needed for embryogenesis; however what level is required is unknown.

If neither 16 or 39% gravity are sufficient any plans for colonizing the solar system will have taken a major hit. Spending months in a giant centrifuge is probably a non-starter for potential lunar/martian colonists; and needing to build a ring large enough to spin at 1g without rotational effects making things unpleasant for human passengers would require a much larger capital investment than a low g station.

Putting a centrifuge capable of 1g into orbit to investigate this is near the top of my personal astrobiology wishlist; unfortunately I seem to be short the several million it would take to do so.

You're a little more pessimistic about artificial gravity than what the science merits.

The oft-cited figure is that people will get uncomfortable at around 2 rpm, corresponding to about a 250 meter radius. This is big, and the materials needed to hold the centrifuge would be expensive, but honestly it will still cost more for the pressure vessels themselves. To hold two space stations together 500 meters apart, you need a fairly strong tether, but no stronger than you'd need to dangle them in Earth gravity. That's really not the limitation. The centrifugal habitat proposed for the ISS was mainly limited by form factor and the hazards of spinning something around a station that was not designed to spin.

The other reality is that the human tolerance for rotation uneasiness is more likely to be revised to be less restrictive than more restrictive. We've never done such an experiment so we really don't have the data. Your guess is as good as mine for how a person would feel after spinning in a habitat for months on end. We need to find the answer to that question. With our current state of knowledge, however, there's not a huge reason for pessimism.

I think you vastly underestimate human capacity for adaption. Imagine living in a tiny cramped space with no exit, with up to 150 fellow humans. The space is a series of rooms totalling maybe 30m long by 7m wide - possibly the same floor area as a modern American home. But there's 150 of you in it. Eating, sleeping, nothing to do. No internet. No books. Even worse, the floor constantly pitches up and down and forwards abd backwards and side to side at random WITHOUT STOPPING. Wild slopes of up to 45deg are not uncommon. This goes on for YEARS.

Utterly uninhabitable no? Wrong. This is a standard sailing boat, as used for centuries. Many of the sailors were volunteers, returning for repeated tours. Some were press-ganged, kidnapped, taken on board without any experience and expected to adapt or die.

If humans can adapt to the irregular motion and cramped space of a sailboat, a space ring steadily rotating is nothing by comparison.

Submarine would be a more apt comparison. No fresh air for possibly months at a time, can't go outside, etc.

It would be just like that episode on Eureka where Andy the android cop gets teleported to Titan by accident and they can't get him back so everybody talks to him via video feed until he ultimately freezes....wait, maybe that wouldn't be such a good idea for a reality show.

...Putting a centrifuge capable of 1g into orbit to investigate this is near the top of my personal astrobiology wishlist; unfortunately I seem to be short the several millionbillion it would take to do so.

"See that picture above? It shows a new type of rocket engine design. Usually, fuel is pumped into a chamber where the chemicals ignite and are blown out the other end, creating thrust. The design pictured above does this in a new way: as the fuel is pumped into the chamber, it’s spun up, creating a vortex. This focuses the flow, keeping it closer to the center of the chamber. In this way, when the fuel ignites, it keeps the walls of the chamber cooler.

So what, right?

Here’s what: using this technology — developed for rockets for NASA, remember — engineers designed a way to pump water more quickly and efficiently for fire suppression. The result is nothing short of astonishing:

...

In other words, this new system put out a fire more quickly, using less water, and — critically — with fewer firefighters needed to operate the hose. This frees up needed firefighters to do other important tasks on the job, and therefore makes fighting fires faster and safer."

All you've illustrated with this anecdote is that research in one area can benefit another, unrelated area. You have provided no proof that space research per se is any more beneficial than research in any other field. In fact, your entire argument rests on the absurd premise that no matter how well planned and correctly carried out research is, the results are unrelated to the goals.

All you've illustrated with this anecdote is that research in one area can benefit another, unrelated area. You have provided no proof that space research per se is any more beneficial than research in any other field. In fact, your entire argument rests on the absurd premise that no matter how well planned and correctly carried out research is, the results are unrelated to the goals.

Did you read the articles, or just the quoted text? Because all you've done is suggested that only science in which we know the outcomes is science that should be performed...

In what way is research related to space LESS beneficial than research in any other field?

Sorry, but Phil Plait's argument is not based on an absurd premise just because you say it is, and since I'm pretty much just parroting his ideas, mine isn't either.

All you've illustrated with this anecdote is that research in one area can benefit another, unrelated area. You have provided no proof that space research per se is any more beneficial than research in any other field. In fact, your entire argument rests on the absurd premise that no matter how well planned and correctly carried out research is, the results are unrelated to the goals.

... Because all you've done is suggested that only science in which we know the outcomes is science that should be performed...

No, I have not done that, and you're building a straw-man argument. I have not suggested that "only science in which we know the outcomes is science that should be performed". What I suggest is that we should strongly prioritize science in fields where the goals are directly beneficial. I also suggest that public funding goes to research which clearly and in advance declares the desirable outcomes.

Quote:

In what way is research related to space LESS beneficial than research in any other field?

You may want to re-read the anecdotes you provided and think about the actual specific economic impact of the technology transfer, rather than just about how cool it is to have solar cell powered refrigerators or faster fire extinguishers. In other words, did space research pay back, and would the same or greater economic impact have been achieved by other means, including focused research in the respective areas?

It's not a matter of failing to argue my point; there's nothing to argue with you about because you don't understand the subject.

You think that we should've put our resources towards figuring out how to reduce the work required to handle a fire hose, but what you fail to understand is that no one knew to even ask the question "can we reduce the work required to handle a fire hose?".

I also suggest that public funding goes to research which clearly and in advance declares the desirable outcomes.

It's late, so I'm having trouble parsing this. Are you saying that scientists are free to perform science in which they don't know the outcomes in advance, as long as they don't use public funding to do it?

I also suggest that public funding goes to research which clearly and in advance declares the desirable outcomes.

It's late, so I'm having trouble parsing this. Are you saying that scientists are free to perform science in which they don't know the outcomes in advance, as long as they don't use public funding to do it?

1. Knowing what you want to achieve, and knowing what you will achieve, are two different things. There's no way knowing the latter for sure, but you'd better know the former.2. Privately funded research can do whatever nonsense it desires. If I'm paying for your research with my tax money, I'd better be convinced you're not going to blow them on fireworks.

It's not a matter of failing to argue my point; there's nothing to argue with you about because you don't understand the subject.

You think that we should've put our resources towards figuring out how to reduce the work required to handle a fire hose, but what you fail to understand is that no one knew to even ask the question "can we reduce the work required to handle a fire hose?".

That is how it is for all of science.

I can see you're probably getting your ideas how science works from Spiderman. You should do well to acknowledge that even there the research was private (I'll leave out the part where it was also largely unfeasible and unprofitable).

It's not a matter of failing to argue my point; there's nothing to argue with you about because you don't understand the subject.

You think that we should've put our resources towards figuring out how to reduce the work required to handle a fire hose, but what you fail to understand is that no one knew to even ask the question "can we reduce the work required to handle a fire hose?".

That is how it is for all of science.

I can see you're probably getting your ideas how science works from Spiderman. You should do well to acknowledge that even there the research was private (I'll leave out the part where it was also largely unfeasible and unprofitable).

Ok sunshine, if you say so. People do know what questions they are trying to answer, but that doesn't mean that they know the applications of the results. You seem to want to only support science that is asking questions you approve of... that's just not workable.

NASA is why you have the computer that you do today, so quit whining about things you don't understand. If you want to complain, do it using nothing that benefited from the space program.

The space program is a good thing. Why is worrying about "making things better on Earth" even important? Space is far bigger than Earth is, after all, and its not like there aren't large peripheral benefits - satellites have made our lives much better, for instance, as has improved computing technology, and we could make all sorts of neat stuff in space which you can't make easily on Earth due to gravity.

It's not a matter of failing to argue my point; there's nothing to argue with you about because you don't understand the subject.

You think that we should've put our resources towards figuring out how to reduce the work required to handle a fire hose, but what you fail to understand is that no one knew to even ask the question "can we reduce the work required to handle a fire hose?".

That is how it is for all of science.

I can see you're probably getting your ideas how science works from Spiderman. You should do well to acknowledge that even there the research was private (I'll leave out the part where it was also largely unfeasible and unprofitable).

EDIT: I'm getting my ideas of how science works from studying Physics and doing undergraduate research...

Why didn't you begin with that, would have saved us both a lot of time.

NASA is why you have the computer that you do today, so quit whining about things you don't understand. If you want to complain, do it using nothing that benefited from the space program.

The space program is a good thing. Why is worrying about "making things better on Earth" even important? Space is far bigger than Earth is, after all, and its not like there aren't large peripheral benefits - satellites have made our lives much better, for instance, as has improved computing technology, and we could make all sorts of neat stuff in space which you can't make easily on Earth due to gravity.

If you would go so far to claim NASA made my computer, you should be able to prove that it wouldn't have existed without space research. Good luck with that.

Neat stuff is just about the only excuse I've gotten from the pie-in-the-sky apologists. Oh, and satellites are bound to Earth still. We started this discussion with the misguided idea of terraforming Mars, in case you've missed it.

NASA is why you have the computer that you do today, so quit whining about things you don't understand. If you want to complain, do it using nothing that benefited from the space program.

The space program is a good thing. Why is worrying about "making things better on Earth" even important? Space is far bigger than Earth is, after all, and its not like there aren't large peripheral benefits - satellites have made our lives much better, for instance, as has improved computing technology, and we could make all sorts of neat stuff in space which you can't make easily on Earth due to gravity.

If you would go so far to claim NASA made my computer, you should be able to prove that it wouldn't have existed without space research. Good luck with that.

Neat stuff is just about the only excuse I've gotten from the pie-in-the-sky apologists. Oh, and satellites are bound to Earth still. We started this discussion with the misguided idea of terraforming Mars, in case you've missed it.

Proving that is impossible without a time machine; there are all the myriad ways. But it seems likely, given the infusion of cash that came from NASA for better computing solutions for various purposes, that we would be behind the present computer-wise.

Learning about the universe is useful, and frankly, you're kind of being stupid about it in the first place. Why is killing people wrong? The answer is "Because I said so". There are no natural laws that say that killing people is bad; it is we, the people, who say it (partially because we don't want to be killed ourselves).

I'd rather have starving kids in Africa and people on Mars than no starving kids and no one on Mars. I'd rather know more about the Universe than not. And frankly, I don't think that there's really a better use for the money here on Earth anyway. Cutting budgets should start with the military. DARPA is good, buying lots of tanks is bad.

NASA is why you have the computer that you do today, so quit whining about things you don't understand. If you want to complain, do it using nothing that benefited from the space program.

The space program is a good thing. Why is worrying about "making things better on Earth" even important? Space is far bigger than Earth is, after all, and its not like there aren't large peripheral benefits - satellites have made our lives much better, for instance, as has improved computing technology, and we could make all sorts of neat stuff in space which you can't make easily on Earth due to gravity.

If you would go so far to claim NASA made my computer, you should be able to prove that it wouldn't have existed without space research. Good luck with that.

Neat stuff is just about the only excuse I've gotten from the pie-in-the-sky apologists. Oh, and satellites are bound to Earth still. We started this discussion with the misguided idea of terraforming Mars, in case you've missed it.

Proving that is impossible without a time machine; there are all the myriad ways. But it seems likely, given the infusion of cash that came from NASA for better computing solutions for various purposes, that we would be behind the present computer-wise.

Learning about the universe is useful, and frankly, you're kind of being stupid about it in the first place. Why is killing people wrong? The answer is "Because I said so". There are no natural laws that say that killing people is bad; it is we, the people, who say it (partially because we don't want to be killed ourselves).

I'd rather have starving kids in Africa and people on Mars than no starving kids and no one on Mars. I'd rather know more about the Universe than not. And frankly, I don't think that there's really a better use for the money here on Earth anyway. Cutting budgets should start with the military. DARPA is good, buying lots of tanks is bad.

Well at least you're being honest about it.

I'm not so much for cutting NASA's meager funding, as I am for getting people to admit that space research is nothing but a whim. Then, I see nothing wrong with being whimsical now and then.

It's not a matter of failing to argue my point; there's nothing to argue with you about because you don't understand the subject.

You think that we should've put our resources towards figuring out how to reduce the work required to handle a fire hose, but what you fail to understand is that no one knew to even ask the question "can we reduce the work required to handle a fire hose?".

That is how it is for all of science.

I can see you're probably getting your ideas how science works from Spiderman. You should do well to acknowledge that even there the research was private (I'll leave out the part where it was also largely unfeasible and unprofitable).

EDIT: I'm getting my ideas of how science works from studying Physics and doing undergraduate research...

Why didn't you begin with that, would have saved us both a lot of time.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.